Vidar

We thought it may become an issue for the warrant but they didn't even notice it The funny thing is the stock mount in the floor is weaker than the bracket.

Got this today. Result. This car has taken a huge amount of work to get back on the road. It still needs a fair bit of work to get to where we want it, however Ethan and I feel like we saved one. We have spend about 10 weekends working on it and a couple of grand of parts. It had structural rust around the window that took a lot of work. Most people wouldn't have bothered and parted it out which would have been a shame as its now a really fun car. We took it for a blat and when you stand on the gas it is a real experience. Its a big engine for a little car and always makes us laugh wen we give it a thrash. We will bring it to the next monthly Auckland Meet I think.

Move on to replacing the temp sender unit and we decided to replace the thermostat also. Temp gauge now works brilliant! On to the heater cable.....problem is we don't have the end for the cable to attache to the valve.... The Ethan said I think I know where it might be. He emptied the ash tray and there it was. Connected the cable and now the valve work perfect. BTW: I hope you like our window washer bottle

I always felt that the steering column felt like it was too close to the dashboard. I did some reading on the internet and found out that the column is designed to collapse and over the years it can push down two or three inches. I loosened the brackets and pulled it back on its shaft and now I can change gear without my one hitting the wheel.

Time to tackle the electrical issues. Indicators didn't work...fixed with a new flasher unit and a couple of bulbs. The fuel gauge doesn't work. The sender seems to work. The wiring is continuous......only thing left is the voltage regulator. Pull the dash out to have a look. Turns out the gauges aren't mounted correctly with brackets so we fixed that. The temp gauge didn't work everything tests ok so it must be the sender. The heater doesn't work. The lever doesn't move.....turns out it is the cable to the heater valve. Time to order some more parts form Rimmer Brothers.

Decided to put new air filters in. Turns out it didn't have any! The air box has holes in the bottom to get more air in. Looks factory. The carbs look interesting. One carb is dirtier than the other. We intend to rebuild these carbs latter and give then a good tune as they are running too rich at the moment.

Painted the door finally. And attached the the stop

I painted the cover attached some new foam to seal it and screwed it back on with new screws The car never came with a rear carpet so after everything went back together Ethan and I went to bunnings and bought a large carpet square for 20 bucks and chucked it in......nice...

Re-assemble the rear end with all new parts

It looks like they have replaced the diff with one form and earlier model and it has more holes to mount a spring (pre swing spring) The holes go into the diff and need to be plugged or it will leak. The meatheads had just used bolts and this meant the swing spring plate wouldn't fit with the bolt head in the way.....so they completely removed it and that was why the back end was all over the place. Ethan cam up with a very simple solution by cutting the heads of a couple of bolts and cutting a groove in them. a little lock tight ensured they wouldn't wind out inside the diff. Time to put is all back together. I ordered a complete bush and bolt replacement kit from rimmers.

The shocks were rubbish also. Time to take the spring out. ITs bolted to the top of the diff as it is the upper arm of the suspension (the lower one is the drive shaft. The two springs compared. The new looks much better than the worn out old one. The we took the old spring off we found it wasn't attached correctly. These springs a supposed to be able to swing on a pivot to stop tuck under (normally under mid corner lift off and causing snap oversteer) The next post will show why.

The rear suspension has never felt right so we decided to see if we can improve it. As you can see the rear spring is very worn. We happen to have a new one in the Spitfire we have been working on so Ethan decided to take it off and look at it.

We needed new seatbelt as the originals we frayed and worn out. Thanks to Rimmers we got some replacements at half what they cost in NZ Ethan had to make up a couple of brackets to make them work though.

When we jacked up the front and took the wheel off to do the rust I noticed that the wheel didn't turn freely. It was dragging both front brakes. SO we pulled a caliber off and it wasn't in very good condition. IT took a lot of compressed air to get one sides pistons out and it was impossible on the other side. In the end we resorted to connecting them to the brake line again with no pad and used the peddle to get the pistons moving. This is what they looked like. The calliper had to be cleaned but it wasn't too bad. Discs look ok for jammed on brakes. Stripped them down and cleaned them up Got a brake upgrade kit from Sterling Brakes and got started rebuilding them. The look much better with new pistons and seals. Ready to go back on the car. We put them back on and bleed the system and it brakes really well now and goes better without the brakes stuck on

We decided to move on to the drivers door. It was in bad shape with rust and the stop was broken We welded in the bracket of the door stop and then went after the rust in the bottom corner Fresh metal Welded in Primer on the inside Primer on the outside New seal. Will show some pictures of it on the car soon.